Each funding institution will work within its own legal and operational framework, and we are committed to working towards these goals together. We intend to establish joint working groups where appropriate. We call on governments and other actors that generate routine health service statistics and other types of public health data to adopt a similar approach.
This Statement establishes guiding principles and desired goals. It recognises that flexibility and a variety of approaches will be needed in order to balance the rights of the individuals and communities that contribute data, the investigators that design research and collect and analyse data, and the wider scientific community that might productively use data for further research.